TVXOHOF, MARCH 2018 - MANNIX!

If I had to pick one private detective from TV to be the role model of the genre, it would have to be Joe Mannix.  Sure, one of the archetypes for the private eye - Philip Marlowe - has been well-represented in several dimensions of Toobworld, but first and foremost he is a citizen of BookWorld.  And as a Multiversal, he also can be found in the Cineverse as well as Toobworld.

But Joe Mannix is Toobworld's own.

From Wikipedia:

'Mannix' is an American television detective series that ran from 1967 to 1975 on CBS. Created by Richard Levinson and William Link and developed by executive producer Bruce Geller, the title character, Joe Mannix, is a private investigator. He is played by Mike Connors.

Joseph R. "Joe" Mannix is a regular guy, without pretense, who has a store of proverbs on which to rely in conversation. What demons he has mostly come from having fought in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, where he was initially listed as MIA while he was a prisoner of war in a brutal POW camp until he escaped.

Over the length of the series, a sizable percentage of his old Army comrades turn out to have homicidal impulses against him,as does his fellow running back from his college football days.  During the series, Mannix is also revealed to have worked as a mercenary in Latin America.  Like the actor who plays him, Mannix is of Armenian descent. He speaks fluent Armenian from time to time during the series, as well as conversational Spanish.

Mannix is notable for the high level of physical punishment he withstands. During the course of the series, he is shot and wounded over a dozen separate times, and knocked unconscious around 55 times. He frequently takes brutal beatings to the abdomen; some of these went on quite a long time, particularly by the television standards of the era. Whenever he gets into one of his convertibles, he can expect to be shot at or run off the road by another car or find his vehicle sabotaged. 

Nevertheless, he keeps his cool and perseveres until his antagonists are brought down. While making the television pilot "The Name is Mannix", Connors dislocated his shoulder running away from a "From Russia with Love"-type pursuit from a helicopter, and broke his left wrist punching a stuntman who happened to be wearing a steel plate on his back. 

Connors later expressed his concerns over what he saw as the show's dismissive attitude toward violence and its consequences, citing the example of Mannix being thrown down a flight of stairs and appearing without a scratch almost immediately after.

Starting in season two, Mannix lives at 17 Paseo Verde, West Los Angeles. Mannix grew up in a town called Summer Grove, where he was a star football and basketball player. Summer Grove had a thriving Armenian immigrant community. As of 1969, Mannix's mother had died 10 years earlier, and Mannix had not been back to the town since the funeral. Mannix's estranged father, Stefan, was still living in Summer Grove, and Mannix and his father would start a reconciliation. When Mannix returns to Summer Grove for a case three years later, his father and he are on good terms.

Following military service in the Korean War, Mannix attended Western Pacific University on the GI Bill, graduated in 1955, and obtained his private investigator's license in 1956. He is a black belt in karate. Throughout the series, he appears proficient in a variety of athletic pursuits, including sailing, horseback riding, and skiing. He is an accomplished pool player, golfs regularly, and is also a skilled airplane pilot. In the first season, he carries a Walther PP semiautomatic pistol. From the second season on, Mannix carries a Colt Detective Special snubnosed revolver in .38 Special caliber.

During the first season of the series, Joe Mannix works for a large Los Angeles detective agency called Intertect, which was the planned original title of the show.  His superior is Lew Wickersham, played by Joseph Campanella, with the agency featuring the use of computers to help solve crimes. As opposed to the other employees who must wear dark suits and sit in rows of desks with only one piece of paper allowed to be on their desks at one time, Mannix belongs to the classic American detective archetype, thus he usually ignores the computers' solutions, disobeys his boss's orders, and sets out to do things his own way. He wears plaid sport coats and has his own office that he keeps sloppy between his assignments. Lew has cameras in all the rooms of Intertect monitoring the performance of his employees and providing instant feedback through intercoms in the room. Unlike the other Intertect operatives, Mannix attempts to block the camera with a coat rack and insults Lew, comparing him to Big Brother.

To improve the ratings of the show, Desilu head Lucille Ball and producer Bruce Geller made some changes, making the show similar to other private-eye shows. Ball thought the computers were too high-tech and beyond the comprehension of the average viewer of the time and had them removed.

From the second season on, Mannix works on his own with the assistance of his loyal secretary Peggy Fair, a police officer's widow played by Gail Fisher – one of the first African American actresses to have a regular series role. He also receives help from the Los Angeles police department, the two most prominent officers being Lieutenant Art Malcolm (portrayed by Ward Wood) and Lieutenant Adam Tobias (portrayed by Robert Reed). Other police contacts are Lieutenant George Kramer (Larry Linville), who had been the partner of Peggy's late husband,[3] and Lieutenant Dan Ives (Jack Ging).

In 1971, Connors guest-starred on an episode of 'Here's Lucy' entitled "Lucy and Mannix are Held Hostage".

In 1997, Connors reprised the role of Mannix on an episode of 'Diagnosis: Murder' entitled "Hard-Boiled Murder", which serves as a sequel to the Mannix episode "Little Girl Lost".

So there you are - they may have only been guest appearances lasting only one episode each, but that's all that was needed to fulfill the requirements for membership in the Crossover Hall of Fame.

It's just a shame that CBS didn't capitalize on the popularity of 'Mannix' by crossing the character over to other TV series in their line-up, especially with other private eyes, 'Barnaby Jones' and Frank 'Cannon'.  But as seen by his guest shot in an episode of 'Here's Lucy' (working with the boss, basically), Mannix was the type of character who could be featured in a sitcom and not be spoofed like those other two (Barnaby being old and Cannon fat).

But there were other missed opportunities.....

1] Let's begin with the creators of the show, Richard Levinson and William Link.  They're probably best known today as the creators of 'Columbo' and they would go on from there to create Jessica Fletcher of 'Murder, She Wrote'.  But imagine if they wanted to get a back-door pilot for ''Columbo' by presenting the rumpled detective in an episode of 'Mannix'.  It would certainly be a different show than what we're familiar with today.  First off, if sold, it would have been a CBS show and have that patina that marked their dramas.  The actor playing the Lieutenant would have been different as well.  Early in the talent search, they were looking for someone more along the lines of Thomas Mitchell or Pat O'Brien.  They might have landed Bing Crosby, their original TV target, if he thought it was just going to be that one episode of 'Mannix'.  So it's a good thing it never happened.

But that doesn't mean Mannix never got the chance to work with the Lieutenant.  He worked with a lot of LAPD Lieutenants; we just never got to see him with Columbo.  Or, as this publicity picture would suggest, maybe they were friends outside of the trade.

2] Remember those private eye awards ceremonies where Jim Rockford would meet up with Lance White, Vern St Cloud, Beamer, and Marcus "Gabby" Hayes?  Mannix could have been at one of those.  Even better?  Mannix and Rockford could have met each other during the Korean War.

3] As you can see from the two examples above, publicity pictures are a good starting point to launch fanfic, and here's another: The Impossible Mission Force often brought in outside help on particular cases.  It could be that Joe Mannix crossed Jim Phelps' radar, especially while he was working with Intertect.  And that could be the basis for whatever happened while Mannix was working as a mercenary in Latin America.

4] One of Mannix's contacts on the LAPD was Lt. Adam Tobias and it seems apparent that Tobias was an "Identical Cousin" to an architect named Mike Brady.  This theoretical crossover is more for building the case for Mike Brady's membership than just to add more possibilities to Mannix's tally.  There were several cases in which Mannix was inside a house designed by Mike Brady, based on the same plans he used for the building of his own home.  

The episodes were:

• "One For The Lady"
• "The Danford File"
• "The Ragged Edge"

As I said, I'm not saying Mannix ever dealt with Mike Brady himself; just that he was in houses designed by that architect.

5]

And if he met Cannon, it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, that Mannix also met 'Barnaby Jones'.....

But those are just suppositions, good for fanfic but not really admissable for membership in the Hall of Fame unless this was going to be a Birthday Honors entry.  But since Joe Mannix already has those other requirements fulfilled, he can walk into the Hall with his heavily bruised head held high.

Welcome to the TVXOHOF, Joe.  And good night and may God bless Mike Connors.....

SHOWS CITED:

• 'Mannix'
• 'Here's Lucy'
• 'Diagnosis Murder'
• 'Mission Impossible'
• 'The Brady Bunch'
• 'Columbo'
• 'The Rockford Files'
• 'Cannon'
• 'Barnaby Jones'